in which I drown my feelings in juice

About three weeks ago I hurt my hip. Actually if you want to get technical I didn't hurt my hip, I was just standing in my living room when jparks let the dog into the house. 50 pounds of canine stupidity came running full speed at me and took me out. Less than a week later I was at the orthopedist for my hip because the situation was not good. I was told I should cut back on pretty much all lower body crossfit activities and see a physical therapist. I then made the brilliant decision to run a 2.5 mile relay to see if my hip could handle it since I had a half marathon planned for two weeks later. It could not. My physical therapist at that point told me I was allowed to do nothing. No swimming, no crossfit at all, no nothing. I was to sit on my ass for a month, only moving to do my rehab exercises.

You can imagine how well that went over with me. "Can I go to class and just..." "No!" "I'm signed up for a half..." "No!" "Well, what if I just.." "No! You are to do nothing. You need to heal otherwise you'll hurt yourself more and need surgery. Rest!" 

At this point I figured if I was going to sit around being miserable and mopey, I might as well add a juice cleanse into the mix! 3 days with no food! That is totally doable if I can't workout! I've done it before, I know it's possible! Other motivational self talk! Then I started cleanse shopping and suddenly the idea of three days of juice seemed really unappealing. And way too expensive. Eventually I settled on the Suja Essentials 3-Day Fresh Start because it was only three juices a day with small "meals" between them and it was cheap. Yay for cheap!

Juices purchased, raw almond purchased, rice cakes purchased, let's go!

Breakfast: Spicy Lemonade. Chased with black iced coffee. Because you know, I'm just not committed to this enough to stop drinking iced coffee. 

My body is as nourished as my backyard grass

Oh, hunger! Time to consult my booklet and see what my morning meal is! 20 raw almonds and an apple! Well, that's just sad.

Lunch: Green Greatness, which I was warned was the worst thing that a friend had ever tasted. My excitement was obviously high. 

Everything is better through a straw, right? Juice, cocaine, etc. 

Honest talk? It wasn't bad. Not great, but I would rather suck down another bottle of it before ever touching BluePrint Cleanse's beet, apple, carrot, and despair juice again.

Approximately 15 minutes after finishing the Green Greatness, hunger hit again. Time to really splurge on solid food. Boiled eggs, plain guacamole, and pepper. It was surprisingly good and filling. Thank you fine print in the booklet that casually mentioned non-vegan meal options. Also, thanks Trader Joe's for selling peeled hard boiled eggs. I'm pretending they aren't weird and sold to you in a giant bucket filled with chemicals that you repackage into less gross baggies. 

I don't even understand how I managed to take a picture before falling face first into the bowl.

Dinner: Vanilla Nutz. 

The unnecessary z did not add a tinge of idiot to the flavor

Vanilla Nutz managed to be watery and slimy at the same time but the taste was good. I think it must have been because of the inclusion of banana, which is not in the far superior BluePrint Cleanse's cashew vanilla milk. 

This one actually held me over the longest, thanks fat and extra calories! But still I got hungry and decided to go off booklet and have gluten free toast and almond butter. 

My definition of "meal" has really changed

I won't take you through the next two days because I can honestly say they were almost identical to day one. I did opt for a rice cake instead of the toast on the next days and one day I took my egg and sliced it onto the rice cake with a smear of guacamole under it. That's actually a snack I'm going to keep in rotation. 

On the morning after the cleanse, I woke up not really knowing what I was going to have for breakfast. I could have ANYTHING. No restrictions! So what did I have?

plain greek yogurt, hemp seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, drizzle of honey, sprinkle of cinnamon

I'm actually embarrassed about how healthy that is and even more embarrassed to tell you that I like it so much that it's my regular breakfast now. That was my takeaway from this cleanse, that when I strip away all the crap I eat, I do actually find healthy foods to be good and filling. I paid ~$30 for the 9 bottles of juice so really, that's not that expensive to reset some pretty crappy eating habits. It's almost something I could see doing every few months just to keep myself in check or get back on track, though I don't know how I would have fared if I were still lifting weights and running. 

During this 3-day cleanse I sold my juicer to someone from Craigslist in a grocery store parking lot while Truman ate Cheetos standing next to me. It was hard not to laugh at the situation as I drove off drinking a pre-made bottle of Green Greatness. Convenience will always win with me.